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"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

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Topic: Profiles in Courage (Read 3690 times)

Truth-Telling Cop who claims CIA enables drug-trafficing. On November 15, 1996, then Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch visited Los Angeles' Locke High School for a town hall meeting. At the meeting, Ruppert publicly confronted Deutch, saying that in his experience as an LAPD narcotics officer he had seen evidence of CIA complicity in drug dealing.[11] Ruppert went on to become an investigator and journalist,[12] and established the publication From The Wilderness, a watchdog publication that exposed governmental corruption, including his experience with CIA drug dealing activities.[13]

Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil,[14] published in September 2004. Crossing The Rubicon claims that Vice President Dick Cheney, the US government, and Wall Street had a well-developed awareness of and colluded with the perpetrators of 9/11.

Ruppert appears in the documentary films The 911 Report You Never Saw - The Great Conspiracy, Peak Oil - Imposed by Nature,[15] Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, The End of Suburbia, American Drug War: The Last White Hope and Collapse.

There’s a line in the old King James, that says the prayers of a faithful person ‘availeth much.’ One person, one small community, acting in faithfulness, can bring healing, hope, change.”

Meet the Churchgoers Helping Lead an Uprising Against Big Oil in Texas

Activists in Texas are connecting the fight against the Keystone pipeline with the struggle for environmental justice

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Since the blockaders began showing up at his church, Childress told me as we drank coffee on his back porch the next morning, people have noticed a change in his preaching. “There’s an urgency that maybe I didn’t have before. They’re reminding us that climate change is not something we’re going to fiddle-faddle around with. I mean, you’ve got to step up now.”

But there’s more to it, Childress continued: “I’m preaching to young people who are putting their lives on the line. They didn’t come down here driving a Mercedes Benz, sitting around under a shade tree eating grapes. They hitchhiked. They rode buses. And they get arrested, they get pepper-sprayed, they get some stiff penalties thrown against them.” (In January, Tar Sands Blockade and allied groups settled a lawsuit brought by TransCanada seeking $5 million in damages for construction delays, forcing them to stay off the pipeline easement and any TransCanada property.)

Childress noted that some of the blockaders, especially the Occupy veterans, refer to the corporate capitalist system as “the Machine.” “And they’re exactly right, using that kind of language,” he said. “They’re going up against the Machine in a real, clearly defined way. Not subtle—really upfront. And I’m trying to help them realize what it’s going to take to sustain the struggle.”

Snippet 2:

]The prophet Amos, Childress told us, was called to be a fierce advocate—among the Bible’s fiercest—on behalf of justice for the poor and oppressed. “Amos’s strong preaching was hard then, and it’s hard today,” Childress said. Just as in Amos’s day, when the wealthy trampled on the poor while worshiping piously in the temples, so today our “programs of care for the poor and needy” are dismantled “with a religious zeal.” Meanwhile, “giant corporations get a free ride. They can diminish people, destroy the earth, pour out climate-changing carbon, all in the interest of short-term profit, and no one can do anything about it.” But Amos knew, Childress assured us, that God is the spring of justice—and that without God, “we are unable to keep up the struggle for justice and goodness and love over the long haul.”

“God calls us to justice, to be a people who embody justice,” said Childress, himself a longtime activist on issues of race, poverty and peace. And yet, as King and all those who fought for civil rights knew, “serving and battling for justice is a long-haul kind of calling.”

Childress—deeply influenced by the likes of Wendell Berry, the late Will D. Campbell and, of course, King—is not a Bible-thumper. He doesn’t shout. Heavyset and ruddy-faced, with a whitening, close-cropped beard, he speaks with a soft, flat West Texas accent. But his voice carries real power and conviction.

Eleanor Roosevelt was both the most loved by the people and the most hated First Lady by the elites in American History because of her courageous activities.

J. Edgar Hoover led an effort to have Eleanor Roosevelt declared a negro, be stripped of her citizenship and deported to Liberia!

Eleanor Roosevelt has the largest FBI file of any First Lady.

The Republican Campaign button for the 1936 election had, "We don't like Eleanor either." on it. IOW, every bigot out there hated her guts. She was often depicted with "coal dust" on her face in satirical newspaper cartoons. No, it wasn't because she was friendly with coal miners and supported unions for them...

The Daughters of the American Revolution DID NOT LIKE HER AT ALL. Why? Because she supported unions and defended the civil rights of African Americans. She made these High society ladies uncomfortable with all this "boat rocking". LOL!

And that's WHY J. Edgar Hoover, one of the greatest fascist Racist Police State Pigs in American History, targeted her. Even with all her high society white family credentials, the INSTANT she moved to support a democratic USA with equal rights for all, the propaganda machine of dedicated fascist racist assholes declared her a N_____R Lover.

When that didn't work, they decided to go all out and to rebrand her genetics in order to DESTROY her credibility.

The Klu Klux Klan placed the highest price on her head (reward for assassinating her) that that pack of cowardly murdering racists had ever placed on anyone on its list of "Enemies of Amerika".

Despite many assasination threats and attempts (she carried a gun), she refused secret service protection until her death in 1962.

As long as there be war,I then mustAsk and answerAm I worth dying for?

When Eleanor informs Truman of her husband's death:ER: Harry, He's dead.HT: Oh Mrs. Roosevelt, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?ER: That's the wrong question because you are the one in trouble now.

Historians discuss all the above and much more including the 1918 Lucy Mercer affair with FDR that caused Eleanor to, henceforth, have her own bedroom, how FDR's mother told him that if he divorced Eleanor to marry Lucy, she would cut him off from the family money and how, despite all this, in 1921 when FDR got polio, Eleanor was the one who willingly gave him a daily enema, inserted a glass tube in his **** to extract urine (because of his paralysis) and gave him the support in the political arena to win the presidency over a decade later. He could not have done it without her. The elitist, greedy, anti-democratic, racist, predatory capitalists from EVERY political party have been out to undo everything SHE and FDR accomplished for human decency ever since.

Harry Heinz Schwarz (13 May 1924 – 5 February 2010) was a South African lawyer, statesman and long-time political opposition leader against apartheid, who eventually served as the South African ambassador to the United States during the country’s transition to representative democracy.

Schwarz rose from the childhood poverty he experienced as a German Jewish refugee to become a lawyer and a member of the Transvaal Provincial Council, where from 1963 to 1974, he was Leader of the Opposition.

In the 1964 Rivonia Trial he was a defence lawyer. Advocating a more aggressive political opposition to the National Party's racial policies in the 1960s and 1970s, as Leader of the United Party in Transvaal and leader of the liberal "Young Turks", he clashed with the United Party establishment.

He championed the cause of non-violent resistance to apartheid and in 1974 signed the Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith with Mangosuthu Buthelezi for a non-racial democratic society in South Africa. He was in the opposition for over 40 years and was a founding member of the Democratic Party.

In light of his record, his appointment as South African Ambassador to the United States in 1990 was widely heralded as symbolic of the government's commitment to ending apartheid,[1] and played a significant role in renewing the nation's image as the new democratic South Africa.[2][3][4]

The Torch Commando was born out of the work of the Springbok Legion, a South African organisation of World War II veterans, founded in 1941 during the second world war by progressive anti-fascist servicemen, and the War Veterans Action Committee established with the involvement of Springbok Legionaires to appeal to a broader base of ex-servicemen.

The Springbok Legion was initially formed by members of the 9th Recce Battalion of the South African Tank Corps, the Soldiers Interests Committee formed by members of the First South African Brigade in Addas Ababa, and the Union of Soldiers formed by the same brigade in Egypt.

The aims and objectives of the Springbok Legion were enunciated in its 'Soldiers Manifesto'. The Springbok Legion was open to all servicemen regardless of race or gender and was avowedly anti-fascist and anti-racist. Amongst its leading members were servicemen such as Joe Slovo, Lionel Bernstein, Wolfie Kodesh, Jack Hodgson and Fred Carneson who all later joined the African National Congress and its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe under the command of Nelson Mandela.

Others such as Harry Schwarz, a later well known anti-apartheid political leader, lawyer and ambassador to the United States during the government on national unity was one of the organizations founders.

Torch Commando in action

The Torch Commando was founded in 1951 during the Coloured vote constitutional crisis, in protest against the South African government's plan to remove coloureds from the voters roll in the Cape.

At a time when the Springbok Legion's numbers were diminishing, the Torch Commando strategy gave a new lease of life to the aims and objectives of the Springbok Legion, perceived as being too left wing by some, and gave a home to whites in other liberal formations including liberals in the United Party, who identified with black grievances.

The wartime fighter ace Group Captain Adolph Malan became the president of the 'Torch Commando'. The commando's main activities were torchlight marches, from which they took their name. The largest march attracted 75,000 protesters.

Torch Commando in action

The Torch Commando existed for more than five years, and at its height had 250,000 members.

The government was alarmed by the number of judges, public servants and military officers joining the organisation, and a new law was passed to ban anyone in public service or the military from joining.

Subsequently the National Party did everything to purge the memory of the Springbok Legion, Torch Commando and men such as 'Sailor' Malan, who have appeal with white Afrikaner youth.

While Harry Shwartz was busy trying to move South Africa to become a non-racist representative republic, the multimillionaire gold mining tycoon Charles W. Englehard Jr. was doing all he could to SUPPORT Apartheid South Africa.

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The policy of South Africa as expressed by the new Prime Minister [John Vorster] is as much in the interests of South Africa as anything I can think of or suggest. I am not a South African, but there is nothing I would do better or differently." --U.S. multinational businessman Charles W. Engelhard, 1967

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More than any other American, Charles Engelhard gave direct political support to the Nationalist government. Engelhard sat on the boards of Witwatersrand Native Labor Association and Native Recruiting Agency, two South African government agencies which recruit cheap African labor to work in the mines.

Engelhard also served as a leading officer of the South African Foundation, a South African government businessmen's public relations front on which no other American would agree to serve. This foundation was set up in the words of its leaders "because there is a systematic, well-organized, well-financed attack on South Africa, conducted on a world scale by a number of organizations supported by Afro-Asian and Communist interests."

And while Engelhard was busy telling American detractors that U.S. corporate involvement could play a constructive role in helping bring South Africa's black majority toward full political participation, his foundation's book, South Africa in the Sixties, was arguing that "in regard to overall direction, white hegemony is to prevail."

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By far the largest of Engelhard's stakes, however, was in the South African gold mining industry, which for decades has mined sub-economic gold by employing Africans at wages half the poverty datum level. Largely through his chairmanship and stock holdings in Rand Mines, Engelhard's interests controlled an estimated 15 per cent of South African gold mining industry during the '60s. Indeed, it was through his entry into the South African gold industry during the early '50s that Engelhard first started to turn his father's relatively modest metals business into a global powerhouse.

Setting himself up as a bullion dealer in South Africa, Engelhard beat restrictions on the export of newly mined gold by manufacturing solid gold art items--solid gold pulpit tops, dishes, bracelets. Once legally exported in this manner, they would be melted down into bullion again.

Yeah, you guessed it. Gold shaped like animals BEAT THE RESTRICTIONS in order to be remelted into giold bullion in the USA again.

That certainly would explain the LOVE of ART in the form of golden statues of animals by certain people that ADMIRE Engelhard, don't you think? It's like a massive private joke about making money from slave labor AND bypassing export laws designed to force South Africa to treat its blacks better. DOUBLE PROFITS!It must be hilarious to a certain strain of gold bug...

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But while the Cabots may now be hundreds of years removed from the wealth they earned in the slave trade, the Engelhard family South African connection lives on, albeit without Charles W.

SHORTLY before his death, Engelhard, in a complicated series of transactions, sold off much of his South African interests to Anglo-American and other companies. The current Engelhard family parent corporation, Engelhard Minerals and Chemicals, still has diversified holdings in South Africa, but in the recent climate of intensified criticism of U.S. operations there, the Engelhard company has refused to disclose the extent of the assets and activities of its privately held South African subsidiary.

In October, 1976, the company refused to cooperate with Sen. Dick Clark's committee studying U.S. investments in Southern Africa.

Meanwhile, the Engelhard family has shifted much of its formerly South African capital into the manufacture of pollution control devices. somehow it doesn't seem to make their money much cleaner.

Engelhard stabled race horses in North Carolina, England and South Africa, $15 million worth of race horses -- about the same amount that the Engelhard Foundation has in assets. He needed three private jets and a helicopter to transport him to his international business and pleasure appointments.

"The key to the misery of these people is to let them get enough to eat, enough clothes, a car and some financial stability. I don't care what the college professors say, I know this is what the black people of Africa want." --Charles W. Engelhard, 1966

Englehard died in 1971 but Engelhard mining and minerals continued to live down to its Apartheid defending legacy with a clever dirty trick.

Please note the DATE, October, 1976, the company refused to cooperate with Sen. Dick Clark's committee studying U.S. investments in Southern Africa. That is the year they claimed they "tested" the market for a type of bullion sale and withdrew it. Senator Cark was breathing down their necks so they waited a year and went ahead with the scam. Read on.

The American public was souring on South Africa and those nifty Gold Krugerrand sales were dropping. The American public were being educated by people like Shwartz on how Black Africans were treated and didn't like it one bit (except for our racists, of course!).

So Engelhard Enterprises of SA came up with a clever plan to fool Americans into buying his golld and silver rounds to take advantage of the slump in Krugerrand sales.

They sweetend the deal by making Engelhard rounds slightly purer (24 karat instead 22 karat) to make sure anybody that discovered the ORIGIN of the metal in the coins would not have a "consciense" attack (with goldbugs, karats talk a lot louder than a consciense does!).

I had never heard of these coins before but I imagine the goldbugs know about them. Engelhard must have made a tidy profit from this "gold art work" importing scam (that the corporation added a new clever twist to after his death with the bullion coins) because he was REALLY loaded when he died. That coin, because of this, certainly deserves to bear the name "Englehard" embossed on that symbol of greed and African slave labor.

Don't you just love how these mining firms operate? Such INTEGRITY, eh? Apartheid, YES! Con the American coin buyer, YES! Refuse to cooperate with a U.S senatorial committee, YES! Engelhard Enterprises of SA was (probably still is) convinced that he who has the gold, makes the rules. It's a wonderful life!

I do admit that when you tag the word, "American(s)" on to something, Americans fall for it hook, line and sinker. I guess that is why all those fascist Koch echo chamber un-think tanks always make sure the handle starts with "Americans" for this, that and the other!

After rich people die you ALWAYS learn of the "Foundation" (a tradition of tax dodging shenanigans founded by Rockefeller) and the goody two shoes things it is doing in the old reptile's name.

But this bit of philanthropy had a racist bent to it worthy of the old reptile himself.

The path to Engelhard's "sainthood" (naming a library in HAHVAHD for him) while simultaneously accompanied mysteriously by the demotion of the Department of Afro-American Studies to committee status.

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"...the library in the new building will be named the Charles Engelhart Public Affairs Library, in recognition of a gift of one million dollars from the Charles Engelhard Foundation." --JFK School of Government Spring 1978 Bulletin.

No, I can't prove the two were connected but the timing and the MONEY to HAHVAHD tells the story. At any rate, the money "donated" to Harvard by the Engelhard foundation SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUT IN A TRUST FOR SOUTH AFRICAN MINERS or at least sent to Harry Shwartz to help in his and Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid struggle, not used for some God Damned library.

Here's a little background on the war at Harvard and how the bad guys won it.

Why do I say this? Didn't south Africa get a Representative Republic and didn't it end Apartheid?

Yes, but about 10 years LATER than it should have BECAUSE of Engelhard's money.

Harvard was KEY to telling the world that South Africa was out of line and had to end Apartheid. Several members of congress were prevailing on Harvard to divest of its investments in South Africa and ALONG comes the Engelhard Foundation and drops a million bucks in their lap!

Sure, Sophie Engelhard wanted her dadddy to look good but there was MORE TO IT THAN THAT. Read on. Sophie must have been quite friendly with Bok but maybe I am just imagining all these amazing coincidences that clipped Harvard's wings and allowed Apartheid to continue OVER TEN MORE YEARS.

Sure, Reagan was a big fan of Apartheid too but IF Harvard hadn't received that "donation" in 1977 and HAD DIVESTED THEN of all South African investments publicly on the world stage, SA Apartheid could have ended BEFORE Bush stole the presidency for Reagan in 1980.

If Carter had been able to broker an anti-Apartheid new government in 1979, the subsequent boost in his popularity might have well been enough to prevent Bush's skullduggery with Iran from getting Reagan elected.

THAT's what blood money from a racist predatory capitalist can do to a country and to a university that started out as a college based on MORAL behavior. The bad guys won. Sorry.

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Throughout the 1970s, the University was engulfed in an intense debate over the moral implications of its financial investments in apartheid South Africa.

In 1979, protests also erupted over the dedication of a library at the Kennedy School of Governmen to an apartheid supporter and the rumored demotion of the Department of Afro-American Studies to committee status.

The unrest prompted the University to weigh the symbolic impact of pulling Harvard capital out of South Africa with possible financial losses. Some argued that Harvard ought to use its international stature to take an ethical position against apartheid and questioned the moral validity of the Harvard Corporation’s investment policy at the time.

By the end of 1978, though, the University evaluated corporations for investments based on the benefits they provided nonwhite employees. This policy was proposed by the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR)—a committee formed in 1973 to advise the Corporation on ethical issues.

Amid this turmoil over Harvard’s South African investments, the Kennedy School announced it would name its library after Charles W. Engelhard, an industrialist whose political and financial participation in South Africa reputedly supported the apartheid regime. In their protests for divestment, some students denounced the naming of the library after Engelhard.

The controversy reached a national scale when seven members of Congress wrote a letter to Bok on Dec. 15, made public on Jan. 3, expressing their concern over the library’s name.

“We fear that the recognition of Engelhard at this particular time may be interpreted by the South African government and its supporters as an indication of official acceptance—or at least tolerance—of apartheid by major American institutions,” the legislators wrote.

University officials eventually compromised with protesters by putting a plaque saying that the funds were given in Engelhard’s memory rather than naming the library after Engelhard.

The fight over the dedication of the Engelhard library was not the only development in the protests of the 1978-1979 school year.

In 1979, some students coupled rumors circulating of a possible demotion of the Af-Am department to an interdisciplinary committee with calls for divestment as grounds for protest.

The credentialed assholes at Harvard fought the students AND the credentialed principled faculty on the issue of divestment. You have heard these arguments before and have even heard them here from people that believe morality and money aren't related. Of course that is a pretense. It's just greed in action with some erudite cover speech.

Watch Bok in Harvard dance:

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The debate over Harvard’s investment even reached members of Congress. Rep.-elect William R. Ratchford, D-Conn., told The Crimson that Harvard’s divestment from South Africa-related stock could influence national and international governments against apartheid.

In late spring, the Faculty circulated a letter that endorsed a gradual, five-step policy to force corporations to pull out of South Africa. The letter, signed by over 100 professors, urged Harvard to stop investing in corporations operating in South Africa, and to support or initiate shareholder resolutions calling for corporate withdrawal. According to this letter, if these efforts fail, Harvard should adopt a policy of selective divestment.

MONEY AND MORALS

Bok was reluctant to yield to student and Faculty pressure. He wrote two letters addressing divestment from South Africa in which he explained his support for University policy.

In an open letter in March, Bok wrote that the purpose of a university is not “to reform society in specific ways,” but to transmit knowledge and protect its financial stability. In his second letter in April, Bok doubted the effectiveness of divestment in promoting the end of apartheid, and supported the Corporation’s position that the best way for Harvard to influence corporate behavior was “to vote as a shareholder.”

Bok’s open letters played an important role in the debate on Harvard’s South Africa-related investments.

According to Morton Keller, co-author of Making Harvard Modern, Bok was well aware of the moral implications of Harvard’s investments, but he also felt it his duty to protect the financial stability of the University.

“Derek Bok was very much double-minded about it,” Keller says. “Part of him responded favorably to the idea that there should be a moral dimension [to Harvard’s investment policy.” “Part of him opposed it in the sense that his primary responsibility was to see that the University was affluent and solvent,” Keller continues.

“And to get into the business of deciding what was moral and what was immoral in the way of investments was going down a dangerous road.”

The Corporation never launched full and immediate divestment, though it sold stocks in companies that did not contribute to anti-apartheid efforts, which included protesting to the government and training or promoting black employees.

“I don’t think it is correct to say that the Corporation changed its mind,” Bok, who led the Corporation in the late 1970s, writes in an e-mail. “We were asked to sell all of the stock of all the scores of companies which did any business in South Africa. We never agreed to that demand. We did decide to sell a few stocks, amounting, I would guess, to only half a dozen companies or so.”

Mansfield says that the University did realize its moral responsibility in its financial investments.

“They ended up accepting the premise of divestment advocates, namely that the University had a moral responsibility not to invest in companies that were complicit in apartheid,” Mansfield says.

“It certainly made our investment managers aware that they could be confronted with moral objections. I imagine that has remained,” Mansfield adds.

So it goes. A lot of noise and the credentialed assholes just pretended they were going along until the noise died down. I disagree with Mansfield or at least whatever morality Harvard supposedly espoused didn't last.

The fact that Dershowitz teaches there is testament to that!

Of course it hasn't ended. As we speak there is a huge and ongoing scandal of many top universities, including Harvard, participating in the African corporate land grab. But that's a subject for another day.

So it goes.

Thank God this world has men like Harry Heinz Schwarz to counter the greed and calloused predatory capitalism of people like Engelhard and the corporate predators he left behind.

Do your part, tell somebody that "GREED IS BAD" whenever you get a chance.

And remember Harry Schwartz, an example of honorable, prejudice free behavior for all of us to follow.

Senator Bernie SandersSenator Bernie Sanders says he doesn't wake up dreaming to be president, but if the current ranges crises facing the nation and the planet aren't addressed by other candidates, he says, a presidential candidate he may be. (Credit: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)

"We are in a situation where we have not been since the late 1920s, before the Depression, where the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of America, while the bottom 60 – six zero – percent owns 2.3 percent of the wealth in America. That is obscene beyond belief."

Published on Wednesday, November 27, 2013 by Common Dreams

Bernie Sanders: To Defeat Oligarchy, I Would Run for President

Latest interview with senator from Vermont shows that his reluctance to run would be outweighed by the scale of unaddressed crises and ignored issues

- Jon Queally, staff writer

Senator Bernie Sanders, for the second time in as many weeks, is indicating serious contemplation for a presidential run in 2016 if none of the potential Democratic candidates show the proper urgency when it comes to addressing a key set of issues that he thinks now face the country and the world.

Stressing the overarching crisis of out-of-control income and wealth inequality coupled with the planetary emergencies of global warming and climate change, Sanders' message has been that unless these problems are put at the forefront of the domestic policy agenda he will feel compelled to run.

In an extended interview with Salon journalist Josh Eidelson published Wednesday, Sanders admitted he does not "wake up every morning with a huge desire to be president of the United States... I don’t."

"What distresses me enormously is that there is very little discussion about [our] major crises, and even less discussion about ideas that can resolve these issues."

However, he continued, "I do wake up believing is that this country is facing more serious crises than we have faced since the Great Depression. And if you include the planetary crisis of global warming, the situation today may even be worse. And given that reality, what distresses me enormously is that there is very little discussion about these major crises, and even less discussion about ideas that can resolve these issues."

In an interview ten days ago with a local Vermont paper, the Independent senator for the first time indicated he would be willing to run if it seemed necessary.

“These are not normal times," he told the Burlington Free Press. "The United States right now is in the middle of a severe crisis and you have to call it what it is.”

As John Nichols reported for The Nation recently, a run by the Vermont senator would pit the populism that is bubbling up from the progressive base of the Democratic Party and among independents against what the Sanders plainly terms the forces of "oligarchy."

"That’s what oligarchy is. Oligarchy is when a small number of people control the economic and political life of the country."

A "small handful of multi-billionaires control the economics of this country," Sanders told Nichols. "Economically, they clearly have an enormous amount of power. And, now, especially with Citizens United, these very same people are now investing in politics. That’s what oligarchy is. Oligarchy is when a small number of people control the economic and political life of the country—certainly including the media—and we are rapidly moving toward an oligarchic form of society.”

According to Nichols, Sanders would enjoy a run again the oligarchs and the system that insulates them from the displeasure and will of the public. In their exchange, Sanders asked Nichols to imagine a presidential candidate who said to voters:

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“I am going to stand with you. And I am going to take these guys on. And I understand that they’re going to be throwing thirty-second ads at me every minute. They’re going to do everything they can to undermine my agenda. But I believe that if we stand together, we can defeat them.”

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“If you had a President who said: ‘Nobody in America is going to make less than $12 or $14 an hour,’ what do you think that would do?

If you had a President who said: ‘You know what, everybody in this country is going to get free primary health care within a year,’ what do you think that would do?

If you had a President say, ‘Every kid in this country is going to go to college regardless of their income,’ what do you think that would do?

If you had a President say, ‘I stand here today and guarantee you that we are not going to cut a nickel in Social Security; in fact we’re going to improve the Social Security program,’ what do you think that would do?

If you had a president who said, ‘Global warming is the great planetary crisis of our time, I’m going to create millions jobs as we transform our energy system. I know the oil companies don’t like it. I know the coal companies don’t like it. But that is what this planet needs: we’re going to lead the world in that direction. We’re going to transform the energy system across this planet—and create millions of jobs while we do that.’

If you had a President say that, what kind of excitement would you generate from young people all over this world?”:

On the political/media landscape and income inequality

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The great moral and economic and political crisis facing this country, which gets relatively little discussion, is the growing disparity in income and wealth that exists in America. We are in a situation where we have not been since the late 1920s, before the Depression, where the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of America, while the bottom 60 – six zero – percent owns 2.3 percent of the wealth in America. That is obscene beyond belief. The worst wealth inequality in the entire — of any major country in the world. And in terms of income, the last statistics we have seen from 2009 to 2012 tell us that 95 percent of all new income in this country went to the top 1 percent.

"So what you have there is obviously [a] horrendous economic situation, but it is very dangerous to our political system. Because big money interests are putting huge amounts of money into the political process through Citizens United. And these are issues that have got to be addressed, or else in my view the United States will move very rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society when our economic and political life is controlled by a handful of billionaires.

"I see this as a huge moral issue, an economic issue, a political issue. There is virtually no discussion about that, virtually none. I don’t know how we can be a serious nation when this issue is not front and center, and there are not real ideas out there on how we address it."

On the crisis of unemployment

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"Real unemployment is not 7.2 percent — it’s close to 14 percent, including those people who have given up looking for work, and who are working part-time. Youth unemployment, youth unemployment is close to 20 percent. African-American youth unemployment is close to 40 percent. These are crises. And yet day after day, we hear about the deficit — which is a serious issue — and we hear almost nothing about the unemployment issue, which among other things is having a horrendous impact on the current young generation, the kids who have graduated high school and college."

On climate change and global warming

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"It is beyond comprehension — although the scientific community is almost unanimous in telling us that global warming is man-made, that it is already causing disastrous problems, and that those problems will only get worse in years to come — that we have almost no movement at all, virtually no movement in Congress on this planetary crisis."

On the social safety net and the middle class

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]"I would say that while the American people feel very strongly — and this is, by the way, across the board, Democrats, Republicans and independents — in opposition to cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, inside the Beltway, the political establishments, there is support for cuts to those terribly important programs. [...]

"We have a middle class that is disappearing, and somebody has got to be speaking strongly to defend our middle class

On the value of a presidential run

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"The nature of media is that presidential campaigns and candidates are a means, to some degree at least, of getting these issues out there. And I think that you can give all the speeches you want on the floor of the Senate, that’s great, but I think being involved in debates and being out there around the country allows — gives you the opportunity to talk about these issues in a way that you otherwise could not."

On Elizabeth Warren

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"Elizabeth Warren is [...] clearly one of the smartest people in the Senate. She is a true progressive. [...] She is doing a great job, and understands fully the issues facing the middle class and working class in this country. She is a very strong proponent in defending the working families in this country."

On Hillary Clinton Check the article. It's politico polite speak for:

On socialism Check the article. Predatory capitalists won't be happy with it at all!

On Walmart

Quote

"Now what is particularly outrageous about the Wal-Mart business model is that the Walton family that owns Wal-Mart is the wealthiest family in this country … The six heirs of Sam Walton are worth about, I believe, over $100 billion. Which is more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people, interestingly. And what is quite amazing is that one of the reasons this family has become so wealthy is that the taxpayers of the United States provide more welfare to the Walton family than any family in America. So that — when you have workers in Wal-Mart who in order to feed their families have got to go on food stamps, have got to go on Medicaid to get their healthcare, have got to live in government-subsidized affordable housing in order to have a roof over their heads — what that dynamic is, essentially, is that the United States, that the taxpayers of this country are in partnership with the Walton family. The Walton family makes all of the money – the wealthiest family in America – while the taxpayers have to subsidize the low-paid employees. And that to me is totally absurd.

"The Wal-Mart family, the wealthiest family in this country, should be paying their workers a living wage, not starvation wages."

Some Nelson Mandela quotes which we don't expect to read in the corporate media's obituaries:

1."A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy. The press must be free from state interference. It must have the economic strength to stand up to the blandishments of government officials. It must have sufficient independence from vested interests to be bold and inquiring without fear or favor. It must enjoy the protection of the constitution, so that it can protect our rights as citizens."

2."If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings."

3."The current world financial crisis also starkly reminds us that many of the concepts that guided our sense of how the world and its affairs are best ordered, have suddenly been shown to be wanting.”

4."Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for nonviolence, justice and equality. He exposes the fallacy of the claim that everyone can be rich and successful provided they work hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry."

5."There is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like."

6.“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

7.“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”

8.“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

9.“No single person can liberate a country. You can only liberate a country if you act as a collective.”

10."If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers."

11.“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”

12.On Gandhi: "From his understanding of wealth and poverty came his understanding of labor and capital, which led him to the solution of trusteeship based on the belief that there is no private ownership of capital; it is given in trust for redistribution and equalization. Similarly, while recognizing differential aptitudes and talents, he holds that these are gifts from God to be used for the collective good."

From a recent 188-page report by the World Health Organization come these ghastly and appalling factoids: •Suicide rates rose 40% in the first six months of 2011 alone.

•Murder has doubled.

•9,100 doctors in Greece, roughly one out of every seven, have been laid off.

Joining those doctors in joblessness are 27.6% of the entire Greek labor force. By comparison, in the depths of the Great Depression, unemployment in the United States peaked at a lower percentage than that. Among Greek young adults under 25 years old, unemployment reached an abominable 64.9% in May. (Yet the unemployment rate in Greece was as low as 7% as recently as 2008.)

I'm sure that my Tea Party friends will blame universal healthcare, paid sick leave and "generous" unemployment benefits for this catastrophe. "If we simply stopped helping people, then they wouldn't need our help," they would say. You can see where that "logic" leads. The dead need no help whatsoever, except possibly burial. Sort of like this: "The Republican healthcare plan: Don't Get Sick. And if you do get sick, Die Quickly."

Maybe you think that I'm kidding about what my Tea Party friends would do. I'm not. A few years ago here in Florida, we had a children's health insurance program called KidCare, with a waiting list of over 100,000. The Tea Party Republicans didn't like that. So they eliminated the waiting list.

But back to Greece. A lot of people blame Greek government debt for the current suffering. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, that most authoritative of all conceivable sources, Greek government debt stands at 160% of GDP, which seems like a lot. But Japanese government debt stands at 215% of GDP, and the unemployment rate in Japan is only 4%.

Moreover, Spain's unemployment rate is virtually as high as Greece's, but Spain's government debt stands at only 85% of GDP. That's less debt than Singapore's, and Singapore's unemployment rate is 1.8%.

So we cannot properly attribute the catastrophe in Greece to labor protection, nor can we attribute it to government borrowing.What is the cause, then? The World Health Organization has the answer: austerity. "Austerity" is a bloodless term for gross economic mismanagement, animated by heartlessness. That robotic cut-cut-cut mentality that deprives us of jobs, of public services, of safety, of health, of infrastructure, of help for the needy, and - ultimately -- of our economic equilibrium and the ability to survive.The mentality that ushers in, and welcomes, a vicious war of all against all. Austerity is destroying an entire country, right before our eyes.

Or, as the World Health Organization put it: "These adverse trends in Greece pose a warning to other countries undergoing significant fiscal austerity, including Spain, Ireland and Italy. It also suggests that ways need to be found for cash-strapped governments to consolidate finances without undermining much-needed investments in health."

In America, we have a rich and powerful lobby that has the same prescription for every economic malady: austerity. Cut-cut-cut. Cut Social Security and Medicare. Cut teacher and police and firefighter jobs. Cut health care. Cut pay and cut pensions. It all boils down to that one ugly word: austerity. And austerity always brings disarray, disaster, decay and death.

People often ask me my position on various issues. Well, I'm for certain things, and I'm against others. But on one issue, I'm very consistent. I'm against pain and suffering. Especially avoidable pain and suffering. And therefore, I'm against austerity. It begins with seemingly innocuous budget cuts. It then leads inexorably to the destruction of countless lives.

Why am I telling you about Greece? In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called "It Can't Happen Here." But it can. And it's up to us to prevent it.

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

"The horror! The horror!" -- The last words of Col. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899).

My youth was during the Vietnam era, and I have to confess that as a hawkish young man I found war rather exciting. I remember going to Aberdeen University and seeing a poster that said, “War is not good for children and other living things,” and it irritated me for its naivety.

But there were rather a lot of posters like this, and, worked on by my valiant if few-and-far-between girlfriends, I gradually started to think in new ways that chipped away at the armour round my heart.

One of the most influential poster voices was a Brazilian archbishop called Helder Camara. He’d come out with things like - why is it that “When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. [But] when I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist”?

I wonder how many of today’s politicians realize that when talking about the “spiral of violence” in the Middle East, they’re drawing on Camara, who published a little book by that name in 1971?

He observed that violence builds up at three levels in a society.Primary violence is the everyday effect of structurally ingrained social injustice. This generates secondary violence - the revolt of the oppressed.And that in turn provokes tertiary violence - repression by the powerful to secure their privileged position.And so the spiral of violence tightens.

After years of being out of print, Archbishop Camara’s little book is now going on the web. It culminates with an “appeal to youth”, saying that wars happen because of the egotism of adults, and he urges the youth to, “provoke discussions [and] force people to think and take up a position: let it be uncomfortable, like truth, demanding, like justice.”

Whether Lebanese or Israeli, war is not good for children and other living things, and the children are always innocent. Camara’s last word is for them: “With you I must remain young in my soul,” he said, “and keep the hope and love I need to help all humanity.”

He observed that violence builds up at three levels in a society. Primary violence is the everyday effect of structurally ingrained social injustice. This generates secondary violence - the revolt of the oppressed. And that in turn provokes tertiary violence - repression by the powerful to secure their privileged position. And so the spiral of violence tightens.

Camara was a true saint (in spite of the HRCC's efforts to quash liberation theology.) And a personal inspiration. He is one of the reasons I am unalterably opposed to violence in resistance.

Martin Luther King Jr removing a burned cross from his front yard with his son at his side.

This will be a very short diary. It will not contain any links or any scholarly references. It is about a very narrow topic, from a very personal, subjective perspective.

The topic at hand is what Martin Luther King actually did, what it was that he actually accomplished.

What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.

I remember that many years ago, when I was a smartass home from first year of college, I was standing in the kitchen arguing with my father. My head was full of newly discovered political ideologies and black nationalism, and I had just read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, probably for the second time.

A bit of context. My father was from a background, which if we were talking about Europe or Latin America, we would call, "peasant" origin, although he had risen solidly into the working-middle class. He was from rural Virginia and his parents had been tobacco farmers. I spent two weeks or so every summer on the farm of my grandmother and step-grandfather.

They had no running water, no gas, a wood burning stove, no bathtubs or toilets but an outhouse, potbelly stoves for heat in the winter, a giant wood pile, a smoke house where hams and bacon hung, chickens, pigs, semi wild housecats that lived outdoors, no tractor or car, but an old plow horse and plows and other horse drawn implements, and electricity only after I was about 8 years old.

The area did not have high schools for blacks and my father went as far as the seventh grade in a one room schoolhouse. All four of his grandparents, whom he had known as a child, had been born slaves. It was mainly because of World War II and urbanization that my father left that life.

They lived in a valley or hollow or "holler" in which all the landowners and tenants were black. In the morning if you wanted to talk to cousin Taft, you would walk down to behind the outhouse and yell across the valley, "Heeeyyyy Taaaaft," and you could see him far, far in the distance, come out of his cabin and yell back.

On the one hand, this was a pleasant situation because they lived in isolation from white people. On the other hand, they did have to leave the valley to go to town where all the rigid rules of Jim Crow applied. By the time I was little, my people had been in this country for six generations (going back, according to oral rendering of our genealogy, to Africa Jones and Mama Suki), much more under slavery than under freedom, and all of it under some form of racial terrorism, which had inculcated many humiliating behavior patterns.

Anyway, that's background. I think we were kind of typical as African Americans in the pre-civil rights era went.

So anyway, I was having this argument with my father about Martin Luther King and how his message was too conservative compared to Malcolm X's message. My father got really angry at me. It wasn't that he disliked Malcolm X, but his point was that Malcolm X hadn't accomplished anything as Dr. King had.

I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his "I have a dream speech."

Before I tell you what my father told me, I want to digress. Because at this point in our amnesiac national existence, my question pretty much reflects the national civic religion view of what Dr. King accomplished. He gave this great speech. Or some people say, "he marched." I was so angry at Mrs. Clinton during the primaries when she said that Dr. King marched, but it was LBJ who delivered the Civil Rights Act.

At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn't that he "marched" or gave a great speech.

My father told me with a sort of cold fury, "Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south."

Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don't know what my father was talking about.

But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.

He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.

I'm guessing that most of you, especially those having come fresh from seeing The Help, may not understand what this was all about. But living in the south (and in parts of the midwest and in many ghettos of the north) was living under terrorism.

It wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.

You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement used to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.

White people also occasionally tried black people, especially black men, for crimes for which they could not conceivably be guilty. With the willing participation of white women, they often accused black men of "assault," which could be anything from **** to not taking off one's hat, to "reckless eyeballing."

This is going to sound awful and perhaps a stain on my late father's memory, but when I was little, before the civil rights movement, my father taught me many, many humiliating practices in order to prevent the random, terroristic, berserk behavior of white people. The one I remember most is that when walking down the street in New York City side by side, hand in hand with my hero-father, if a white woman approached on the same sidewalk, I was to take off my hat and walk behind my father, because he had been taught in the south that black males for some reason were supposed to walk single file in the presence of any white lady.

This was just one of many humiliating practices we were taught to prevent white people from going berserk.

I remember a huge family reunion one August with my aunts and uncles and cousins gathered around my grandparents' vast breakfast table laden with food from the farm, and the state troopers drove up to the house with a car full of rifles and shotguns, and everyone went kind of weirdly blank. They put on the masks that black people used back then to not provoke white berserkness. My strong, valiant, self-educated, articulate uncles, whom I adored, became shuffling, Step-N-Fetchits to avoid provoking the white men. Fortunately the troopers were only looking for an escaped convict. Afterward, the women, my aunts, were furious at the humiliating performance of the men, and said so, something that even a child could understand.

This is the climate of fear that Dr. King ended.

If you didn't get taught such things, let alone experience them, I caution you against invoking the memory of Dr. King as though he belongs exclusively to you and not primarily to African Americans.

The question is, how did Dr. King do this—and of course, he didn't do it alone.

(Of all the other civil rights leaders who helped Dr. King end this reign of terror, I think the most under appreciated is James Farmer, who founded the Congress of Racial Equality and was a leader of nonviolent resistance, and taught the practices of nonviolent resistance.)

So what did they do?They told us: Whatever you are most afraid of doing vis-a-vis white people, go do it. Go ahead down to city hall and try to register to vote, even if they say no, even if they take your name down.

Go ahead sit at that lunch counter. Sue the local school board. All things that most black people would have said back then, without exaggeration, were stark raving insane and would get you killed.

If we do it all together, we'll be okay.

They made black people experience the worst of the worst, collectively, that white people could dish out, and discover that it wasn't that bad. They taught black people how to take a beating—from the southern cops, from police dogs, from fire department hoses. They actually coached young people how to crouch, cover their heads with their arms and take the beating. They taught people how to go to jail, which terrified most decent people.

And you know what? The worst of the worst, wasn't that bad.

Once people had been beaten, had dogs sicced on them, had fire hoses sprayed on them, and been thrown in jail, you know what happened?

These magnificent young black people began singing freedom songs in jail.

That, my friends, is what ended the terrorism of the south. Confronting your worst fears, living through it, and breaking out in a deep throated freedom song. The jailers knew they had lost when they beat the crap out of these young Negroes and the jailed, beaten young people began to sing joyously, first in one town then in another. This is what the writer, James Baldwin, captured like no other writer of the era.

Please let this sink in. It wasn't marches or speeches. It was taking a severe beating, surviving and realizing that our fears were mostly illusory and that we were free.

So yes, Dr. King had many other goals, many other more transcendent, non-racial, policy goals, goals that apply to white people too, like ending poverty, reducing the war-like aspects of our foreign policy, promoting the New Deal goal of universal employment, and so on. But his main accomplishment was ending 200 years of racial terrorism, by getting black people to confront their fears. So please don't tell me that Martin Luther King's dream has not been achieved, unless you knew what racial terrorism was like back then and can make a convincing case you still feel it today. If you did not go through that transition, you're not qualified to say that the dream was not accomplished.

That is what Dr. King did—not march, not give good speeches. He crisscrossed the south organizing people, helping them not be afraid, and encouraging them, like Gandhi did in India, to take the beating that they had been trying to avoid all their lives.

Once the beating was over, we were free.

It wasn't the Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act that freed us. It was taking the beating and thereafter not being afraid. So, sorry Mrs. Clinton, as much as I admire you, you were wrong on this one. Our people freed ourselves and those Acts, as important as they were, were only white people officially recognizing what we had done.

Originally posted to HamdenRice on Mon Aug 29, 2011 at 08:24 AM PDT.

Also republished by The Yes We Can Pragmatists, J Town, Black Kos community, Genealogy and Family History Community, White Privilege Working Group, Barriers and Bridges, Kitchen Table Kibitzing, and Daily Kos.

Camara was a true saint (in spite of the HRCC's efforts to quash liberation theology.) And a personal inspiration. He is one of the reasons I am unalterably opposed to violence in resistance.

I am way behind you in learning of this great man. I had heard of Liberation Theory vaguely with Vatican II but really didn't know much about it. It's only in the last decade or so that I have learned how the real saints are either demonized or studiously ignored. Camara is now an inspiration to me but you are as well, brother.